The 1968 political protests in Chicago upended the way presidents are picked

Political experts explain how a contentious Democratic National Convention in 1968 helped shape the Iowa Caucuses.
Michael Zamora, Rodney White, The Register

As demonstrators are placed into police vans, Chicago police form a battle line against thousands of others during a melee in Chicago on Aug. 28, 1968. The police are lined up and looking north on Michigan Avenue at the Conrad Hilton hotel, the headquarters for the Democratic National Convention.(Photo11: AP)

Bob Krause and a buddy were working on the railroad in Mason City, Iowa, during the tumultuous summer of 1968. On a whim, the recent high school graduates decided to “go see democracy in action.”

They drove a little red Volkswagen to Chicago for the Democratic National Convention, and when they arrived Krause saw a scene he would never forget. The streets outside the Conrad Hilton were filled with protesters yelling “Sieg Heil!” because they saw the police wielding clubs and troops marching in formation.

“There was barbed wire strung at an angle across the street, and klieg lights from the media and the police lit up the area. It was the most eerie thing I had seen in my life,” said Krause.

He was a short-haired farm boy, a naive small-town patriot whose father served in World War II. What was going on? “It didn’t fit any paradigm and forced me to do a lot of thinking,” said Krause, who became a Democratic Party activist and Iowa General Assembly representative.

Those protests rocked the country and helped set in motion a change in the way presidents were selected, from a good-old-boys party nominating process to one where the people’s voice was heard. It also led to changes in the way it all starts – at the Iowa caucuses.

Three years later, Krause watched a man named Richard Bender pick up the telephone after looking at a wall calendar and announce that the Iowa caucuses would be Jan. 24, 1972 – making them the nation's first nominating contest, a status that, over time, would bring presidential contenders and the national media to the state for months at a time.

“It was kind of like being in the room when they signed the Declaration of Independence,” he said.

Chilly responses frustrate anti-war crowd

America was in turmoil in 1968 with protests over the Vietnam War and for civil rights, while dissatisfaction with authority boiled over, often directed at President Lyndon Johnson. But any channel to change seemed to be blocked by the process to challenge party leaders in the coming presidential election.

Sen. Eugene McCarthy of Minnesota initiated a challenge to Johnson as an anti-war candidate for the Democratic nomination, and young voters across the country were mobilized. In March, Bobby Kennedy launched his campaign. His popularity was immediate.

“When Robert Kennedy came to Des Moines, he stood in the Savery Hotel and a line of people went out the door and a block and a half down Locust Street, just waiting to shake his hand,” said Tom Harkin, the former U.S. senator from Iowa.

Like many young people at the time, Harkin got involved in politics because of the Vietnam War. He had been a U.S. Navy pilot until 1967, saw many friends killed, and “came to the conclusion that the war was terrible and didn’t serve a purpose.”

It was that same sentiment that led more Iowans to attend an Iowa caucus for the first time. Held in March 1968, a couple of weeks after Johnson had survived a strong showing by McCarthy in the New Hampshire primary, the caucuses had been seen for decades as a small affair attended by a handful of party workers and donors in someone’s living room.

Only about 10,000 usually attended the precinct caucus, but in 1968, prompted by anti-war efforts, more than 70,000 did, he said.

Johnson announced in March that he would not run. Kennedy was assassinated, and the turmoil continued nationwide.

At the Iowa state convention in June, “the war was the last item of business, and the anti-war folks thought they had won the vote and demanded a roll call,” recalled Bender, a longtime staffer for Harkin. “But the chair of the convention said the minority plank had lost and bang, bang, bang, it was over.”

Chairs were thrown. Folks didn’t think they had been heard, and everyone headed to Chicago in August with a feeling that the party would not give a chance to McCarthy to be nominated and instead choose Hubert Humphrey, who had sat out the nominating process but was backed by party regulars behind Johnson’s stance on the war.

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A demonstrator with his hands on his head is led by Chicago police down Michigan Avenue on Aug. 28, 1968, during a confrontation with police and National Guardsmen who battled demonstrators near the Conrad Hilton Hotel, headquarters for the Democratic National Convention. During the convention, hundreds of demonstrators waged war with police and National Guardsmen on the streets of Chicago. AP

Chicago Mayor Richard J. Daley stands at the microphone as shouts resound through the International Amphitheatre in Chicago on Aug. 28, 1968, demanding that the Democratic National Convention adjourn until later in the day before considering the party platform. During the convention, hundreds of demonstrators waged war with police and National Guardsmen on the streets of Chicago. Jack Thornell, AP

As demonstrators are placed into police vans, Chicago police form a battle line against thousands of others during a melee in Chicago on Aug. 28, 1968. The police are lined up and looking north on Michigan Avenue at the Conrad Hilton hotel, the headquarters for the Democratic National Convention. AP

Chicago police attempt to disperse demonstrators outside the Conrad Hilton, the downtown headquarters for the Democratic National Convention in Chicago, on Aug. 29, 1968. During the convention, hundreds of demonstrators waged war with police and National Guardsmen on the streets of Chicago. AP

Demonstrators use park benches at Grant Park’s Band Shell to construct a barricade against Chicago police and National Guardsmen in Chicago on August 28, 1968. The confrontation left many injured and arrested. AP

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Humphrey nomination galvanizes opponents

With the streets outside the convention teeming with protesters, inside the convention hall “there were people trying to stand up and get attention and overrule the chair,” said Neal Smith, a former Iowa congressman. “They tried to grab the microphone.”

People wanted a voice in the process.

But Humphrey was nominated. The city erupted.

“It was just astounding the sense of chaos, the sense of what we used to think we could count on, all the sudden we weren’t so sure,” Goldford said.

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Gang of Five: Candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination, from left to right, Jerry Brown, Gov. Bill Clinton, Sen. Tom Harkin, Sen. Bob Kerrey and Paul Tsongas gather on stage at the annual Jefferson-Jackson Day dinner in Des Moines on Nov. 25 1991, to drum up support for their campaigns. Register file photo

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Do they look done yet? Govs. Mark Warner, center, of Virginia and Mike Huckabee, right, of Arkansas try their hand at grilling pork chops Sunday evening at a miniature version of the Iowa State Fair in Des Moines. Holly McQueen/The Register

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How Iowa became first: A look at the calendar

Iowa's governor, Harold Hughes, pushed for proportional representation in delegate selection, supported by the McGovern-Fraser Commission that was formed after the general election. Many Democrats thought the party leaders lost the election to Nixon by going with Humphrey.

Instead, primaries and emphasis on better representation of women, minorities and young people would replace “a bunch of old guys making the decisions,” said David Redlawsk, chair of political science at University of Delaware and co-author of “Why Iowa?”

Iowa, he said, was a microcosm of the nation, its parties run from the top down and inaccessible to the average Democratic voter.

Along came Iowa’s own commission, picked to develop a set of reforms for proportional representation of delegates. That needed to start with the caucuses.

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Bender said that without today's technology, each convention at local and state levels had to be a month before the others and that he just counted backward to arrive at Jan. 24, 1972. But it wasn’t entirely an accident. He knew that the caucuses would be first and that that mattered, but he just didn’t know how much.

“It was something so unique in the early days. It was something money couldn’t by,” said Krause, the party activist who saw the Chicago riots and watched Bender settle on the date. He went on to be a state legislator and run for Congress. “The whole machine politics had been discredited. But the caucus was still viewed nationally as ridiculous. You had all these farmers coming in and deciding who would be picked. But it caught the American imagination. It brought us back to our roots.”

The caucuses’ influence started right away in 1972.

National reporters saw that George McGovern of South Dakota did better than expected against favored Edmund Muskie of Maine in the caucuses. It drew national attention in The New York Times, after Bender hastily used an old-fashioned calculator to tabulate the state totals for the waiting media.

Then came Jimmy Carter in 1975, a little-known Georgia governor.

Carter’s strong showing in the Iowa caucuses led to his election and to the ascent of the caucuses. The Republicans followed and eventually started holding their caucuses on the same day.

Just last month, the first potential candidates for the 2020 presidential nomination appeared at the Iowa State Fair, giving average citizens more than two years before the general election to gather information. It was national news.

“None of this would have happened without 1968,” said Bender. “The elevation of forces that wanted change.”